


help… i’m alive (my heart keeps beating like a hammer)

by beetle



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Carl Eldritch Backstory, Emotionally Repressed, Enemies to Friends, Geoffrey McCullum Backstory, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Loss of Innocence, Loss of Parent(s), Loss of Trust, M/M, Mental Instability, Mention of Past Underage Relationship, No Civilian Kills | Not Even Once, Past-Geoffrey McCullum/Carl Eldritch, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rival Relationship, Some Humor, Some Plot, Trust Issues, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vampire Hunters, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:41:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28241070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: “I tremble. They're gonna eat me alive. If I stumble… they're gonna eat me alive. Can you hear my heart beating like a hammer? Beating like a hammer? Help… I’m alive. My heart keeps beating like a hammer.”A curated collection of Geoffrey McCullum’s nights (and one day) before, during, and after the winding-down of London’s twin epidemics of 1918.
Relationships: Geoffrey McCullum/Carl Eldritch, Geoffrey McCullum/Jonathan Reid
Comments: 11
Kudos: 31





	help… i’m alive (my heart keeps beating like a hammer)

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly set post-game by two months, with several flashbacks. Presumes a **Not Even Once** -playthrough for Reid, with few if any Districts lost. SPOILERS. Mentions of past underage relationship. Title from [the Metric song of the same name (acoustic version, performed in “The Rawside of….”)](https://youtu.be/-1pCOR9Rv9M), off their album, _Fantasies_. Lyrics from Genius.com. And, in case anyone is curious . . . [this fifty-six seconds](https://youtu.be/AuPZcsjZ6-Q?t=574) of icy simmer launched the McReid ship, for me. [Masu_Trout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout)’s [VAMPYR fics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/works?fandom_id=23415621) have kept that ship sailing in my, uh, heart, as have [plenty of great stills](https://malwa1216.tumblr.com/post/181020494258) posted at [Malwa1216](https://malwa1216.tumblr.com/post/181020494258)’s Tumblr. SO MUCH SLOW BURN POTENTIAL AND MATERIAL!  
> 

Help… I'm alive,

My heart keeps beating like a hammer.

Hard to be soft.

Tough to be tender.

Come take my pulse,

The pace is on a runaway train.

Help… I'm alive… .

My heart keeps beating like a hammer.

—Metric, “Help, I’m Alive”

* * *

**NIGHT 0**

“We know everything!” Geoffrey McCullum barks, harsh and hoarse as he paces beneath the brittle-bright flicker of Dr. Swansea’s ultraviolet light-curtains. The upper floor of Pembroke Hospital goes briefly dim again as he clicks off the light-trap. Shadows seem to leap from corners and from splintered, dusty floorboards like dime-store villains who can only startle, not scare.

Between the edgy-stark light and the heavy, but floating haze of the orichalum powder, the leech—formerly Dr. Jonathan Reid—looks like the dead thing it is. It finally looks as unclean and unholy as it must on the inside and under its mask of humanity. The sheet-pale skin of its face has gone hectic not from fever or other exertion, but from the wages of its sin. Its right cheek is all-but boiling red and orange, like fire and infection just under the surfaces, consuming the camouflage of skin. McCullum huffs and stalks around its kneeling, hunched figure—but keeping a wise distance, nonetheless. His weapon, securely mounted on his left forearm, feels both heavy and light: liked a lead bar with quicksilver in its marrow.

He only resists the temptation to put a bolt through the leech’s skull, then its heart, by dint of not having a bolt currently mounted.

Really, it’s the minutiae that can make or break a night of the Great Hunt. But McCullum’s nothing if not a glass-half-full sort.

“Swansea and you created this bloody epidemic—aimed to unleash another Disaster, just like William Marshall did,” he goes on, almost chuckling. The leech crumples in on itself further, clearly in crippling pain. Its face looks absolutely horrid—corrupted and fissured and scorched. It’s clutching its torso as if all of it is agonized. Yet, it still finds it within itself to speak its leech-lies.

“No, I—” it gasps and groans and shudders—such drama, from a being that has walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, to re-emerge as the very evil it would have once feared. “I’m trying to put an end to it! Just like you are!”

Even so badly stymied and injured—hobbled—its voice is still infernally resonant and strong. Even in its pleading, it is compelling and commanding. It _bends_ more than it breaks, even without a usual or obvious attempt at mesmer.

McCullum can _feel it_ , that voice, in every drop of blood in his body, like a heated caress to his every molecule.

Unusually unable to help himself he takes a moment only to marvel at what Reid, what _this leech_ must sound like using the full weight and _power_ of its mesmer . . . what it could drive an ordinary person to do, or even someone like _McCullum_ , who’s been trained to resist mesmer and thrall, and has done so for over half his life. . . .

Between that voice and the leech’s piercing, unsettling gaze—the latter, at least, had been a human trait, as well . . . McCullum had seen enough photos of Reid from well-before the epidemic to confirm that—McCullum has no trouble believing it’s rarely had to resort to its supernatural powers to enthrall and convince.

Even knowing what he knows and has known for almost half his misbegotten life, McCullum finds himself desperately wanting to believe even just the half of the creature’s claim—

He cuts the thought off at the knees. He’s been doing that sort of surgery since before Dr. Reid had earned his licensure.

Darting in snake-quick, McCullum grasps the leech by its stubborn jaw. Its beard is neatly groomed, not tacky with blood or gobbets of flesh. It’s clear that _this_ beast fancies itself something of a gentleman. A _civilized_ and posh blood-drinker, not some rat-catching sewer-leech, lurching from fetid shadow to fetid shadow, simply to survive.

McCullum snorts and tightens his grip on its jaw. Despite the burn of Swansea’s ultraviolet trap and the lingering clouds of orichalum powder, the beast’s skin is icy. Still and dry, even closer-in toward the fiery furrows spreading across its cheeks.

“You’re it’s progeny, aren’t you?” McCullum demands, glaring down into that harsh-haggard-handsome face, willing those eyes to open _honestly_ so that he can see their _true_ shade . . . see the scalded-virulent colors of disease and damnation. And indeed, the leech’s eyes _are_ red when they open . . . _simply_ reddened, irritated whites around wide, pained-desperate eyes the color of ice and flame. “Where is the monster hiding? It’s still in England, isn’t it?”

Those keen eyes continue to belie the truth of the beast’s nature, begging for human needs as if _it_ is a _human who needs things and has a right to them_ —to receive them from the only other human present.

_Ha_.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” the leech barks, firm and annoyed, and every inch a modern medicine-man of reason. McCullum shoves it away hard and the leech crumples once again, panting though it no doubt spurns air as it spurns sun’s light. And clearly, air spurns it, as well, for it quickly coughs that air right back out while trying to speak. “Geoffrey . . . please, listen to me—”

Even in its pleading and desperation, even ragged and creaking, that voice is entrancing . . . enthralling . . . _mesmeriz_ —

“No tricks! That shit won’t work on me!” McCullum grits, snarling even though he means to be mocking and derisive. Were the beast not occupied by its own injury and self-preservation his fluster surely would be obvious to its inherited doctor’s eye. And that coupled with the fact that McCullum can’t for the life of him—now that the moment’s passed—tell if the beast had genuinely attempted mesmer or not, causes him no small amount of worry and uncertainty.

With an instinct for the Hunt and for self-preservation that has long served him—and saved him, more times than he can count since the evening that nightmares he hadn’t even known existed became his waking, everyday reality—Geoffrey McCullum presses the compromised leech lying curled and cringing below him. He demands the location of William Marshall and reinforces his deadly urgency with more ultraviolet light.

Only . . . when he presses the clicker, that light flashes, then flickers—spits sparks and hissing crackles . . . then dies. . . .

The entire unused surgery theatre of Pembroke Hospital goes ominously dark.

At his feet, the leech’s gasps and groans of pain turn into winded panting and a soft, relieved moan.

And McCullum is once again alone, in near darkness with a powerful vampire. Long a theme of his life and a consistent situation for a veteran Guard of Priwen—let alone the _Chief_ of the Guard—this time nonetheless feels . . . different. _Especially_ precarious and unsafe, even after most of a lifetime of nearly no _other_ _sort_ of situations.

This moment feels like the turning of several tides, and none of them in McCullum’s favor.

(Carl Eldritch had often castigated McCullum for his disproportionate senses of self-satisfaction and of vengeance—with the added warning of: “Always take stock of yourself and take care of yourself, Geoffrey. Do not become like me. That . . . is not a life to be striving toward when you could be so much more. And the striving away from a life such as mine is . . . very difficult.”

As if McCullum’s life had had a chance of going any other way . . . as if the way it has gone since Eldritch had barreled into his life and saved it had been anything other than all the purpose, nobility, and honor any man could want of a life gone so monstrously askew.

And never mind how Eldritch, himself, actually had ended . . . never mind _that_ at all.)

“So much for modern technology. Time for the tried and true,” McCullum says, chuckling sardonically and with no regrets about Swansea’s little contingency failing. Though, if it had functioned even a minute longer, it might have got him the answers he wanted from this leech . . . when all is said and done, McCullum has little taste for working answers out of leeches. His tastes run to simpler, redder delights than torture, and always have. There is no satisfaction to be had from poking at a beast that merely looks human and barely that in some moments.

McCullum strides away from the cringing leech and tosses the useless clicker over his shoulder. As ever, his crossbow is not his only equipped weapon, nor his best.

As the leech staggers and sways its way painstakingly upright, still panting as if it thinks it’s a man—and a wounded one, at that—McCullum removes a flask from his waistcoat inner pocket. The flask, if not what’s in it, had once belonged to Eldritch.

“Do you know what this is, beast?” he asks, holding up the flask. The leech is upright and still “breathing” hard, but its face looks mostly healed, but for a tracery of red and orange lines that disappears even as McCullum notes it. The leech’s eyes still have their human seeming: that icy-burning blue, surrounded by pink, as if it’s been weeping. But its gaze is steady on McCullum’s . . . weary and anguished looking. “This is a drop of King Arthur's blood. The blood of a true defender of Britain. Stronger than your evil powers!”

McCullum holds the open flask aloft for a moment before drinking the last draught of its contents. Not the _last_ of the Blood, but the last this particular flask might see if McCullum does not win this fight.

The Blood burning into him like copper, steel, and rue, he tosses Eldritch’s flask away. If he wins, there’ll be time and enough to find it.

“This is ridiculous!” the leech decides, shaking its head and spreading its long, large, precise hands. As if to display its seeming defenselessness. Those eyes are still tired and pleading, still so human even in their pale, intimidating strangeness. Disgusted and sneering, McCullum paces a quick, tight circle and covertly readies himself. He can feel Arthur’s blood blazing fire-trails in his own—through his muscle and bone. Through his soul.

And yet, over the rush of that blood and those processes, he can still hear the leech’s eerie-compelling voice: “We're losing precious time, McCullum!”

The leech’s voice is even stronger than it had been a mere minute ago. It’s a roaring river . . . it’s drums in his marrow. A minute from now, who knows what that voice could compel McCullum to think or believe or _do_ . . . mesmer or no?

“True, enough,” he replies almost gently, upon drawing his blade and facing the creature once more . . . before facing it for keeps. For a leech, it looks as if it’s seen six months of bad road and bad days, despite its fine suit and reinforced duster. McCullum smirks: he means to end both their misery tonight or die trying. “Soon, I'll bring your head to your coward of a father.”

Before McCullum’s smirk is done widening, the leech has moved in several wisps of black smoke, and wafts of blood and burning. McCullum’s sword—which had also moved—sweeps through the space where the leech had been.

The leech’s eyes—and the rest of it—appear just in McCullum’s briefly under-defended, right-side peripheral, even as he uses the motion of his failed swing to carry him into a new, hopefully more productive one.

As is so often the case, McCullum’s hope is a lead balloon. The leech is fast and somehow looming right over McCullum’s left side. The beast’s hand—a doctor’s caring, knowledgeable hand—is a cold, iron collar around McCullum’s neck. An iron collar joined with heavy duty nails that prick skin they could easily break.

McCullum’s feet leave the ground and in one moment, he’s well-above the leech’s deathly-pale face. Its eyes . . . dear Heaven, take and keep McCullum’s soul, but _its eyes_ are bright yellow-red in seas of nebulous, shifting red so dark it appears to be black.

Not far below those eyes, the leech’s pale, spare lips have parted around what looks to be _ten_ leeches-worth of long, vicious fangs.

The beast does not seem so weary and desperate, anymore. No, nor so infernally _human_ , either.

**NIGHT 67**

Geoffrey McCullum does not bolt awake from his memories-disguised-as-recurring-nightmares, but only because he never has.

He simply opens his gritty, aching eyes and takes a slightly deeper breath. His safehouse, a small space above a defunct bakery, is bathed in eerie-dim twilight thanks to having left his shades up just the tiniest bit.

It’s a habit he’d begun weeks ago, in the early end of the epidemic. When no happenstance had come along to make the idea as absolutely _fuck-stupid_ as it’d seemed, he had not bothered to discard the habit.

Casting a quick but assessing glance around his Spartan space—little more than his own two footlockers, and the bureau, bed, table, and two chairs that had come with the room—shows nothing has changed during the day. No human has been in or out while he was asleep, or he would have woken. No unholy thing, leech or otherwise, has paid him a visit, either, or he would have surely awoken dead or not at all.

Relaxing slightly, he takes another long, deep breath and allows that of which he has dreamt for weeks—weeks which could also be classified as months, even if only barely two of them—settle and fade back into the wings of his awareness. At least enough that his nightly life can take the center-stage with him in a shape to face whatever lurks beyond the footlights.

Yawning briefly and stretching his way through the usual suspect-cracks and pops, twinges and aches—and one lingering deep-sting, from where a leech got in a lucky, but thankfully shallow bite to his shoulder—he sits up and, upon rolling his achy shoulders, stands up without further delay. He pads to the window to the right of his bed and shifts the shade just enough to peer out into the lively, busy evening.

One brooding quarter of an hour later, Geoffrey McCullum is stepping out into that evening, armed and armored under his duster. The weight of his protections offers less comfort than it used to—less with each passing day—but with the winding down of the Spanish Flu, the vampire epidemic, and the Disaster of which that epidemic had been a mere harbinger, not every chink or hitch in his protections means his brutal and very likely death.

In fact, since that pathetic gaggle of Docks-lurkers last week, McCullum’s barely had a hackle raise. And he certainly hasn’t put a stake in anything since.

With a perfunctory nod at a working lass who’s recently set out her shingle in the set of side-streets he calls stomping grounds—her flat, unacknowledging stare is as empty and blank as a pint-glass at the end of a hard day, and has been since she’d sussed _he’d_ never become a client—McCullum turns left after locking the side entrance behind him. As those empty, utterly indifferent eyes follow him hence, the hackles that have been on holiday raise a sluggish and meaningless alarum.

**#**

As part of his duties and travels for the early evening, he does his rounds of several neighborhoods, catching up news from Guards and informants—the usual quarters. There’s little of relevant note.

Then, he wends his way toward the Docks and the Turquoise Turtle, where he holds his “office hours.” Thankfully, those hours offer news that’s interesting, if not always relevant.

A veteran Priwen Executioner, Beckett, had come across the bodies of a woman and presumably her children, laid reverently in an alley near Southwark. The only signs of foul play had been their deeply sliced throats. Much of their blood had still been in their bodies. She’d alerted the coppers sharpish—anonymously, before scarpering—so that the scent of copious blood and flesh left unattended couldn’t draw packs of weaker, less confrontational leeches like vultures.

A Priwen Gunner and a Cadet had been set upon by a gang of angry drunkards, made angrier, still, by the sight of two young men standing close and conferring in an alley. And the drunkards had decided to make much of it, indeed. Though, by the startling and deep pink on the Gunner’s face and the utterly bloodless blanch of the Cadet’s, McCullum has no doubt “standing close and conferring” had not been the whole of what the drunkards had seen.

He sighs and contents himself with pointedly warning them to pay better attention to their surroundings while _conferring_ , as those drunkards could have easily been a pack of leeches emboldened by starvation. Or something a lot more stealthy and cunning than desperate sewer-rubbish. Had he been a leader like _Eldritch_ had been, he’d have laughed right at the pair of bloody idiots, after chewing them new arseholes for not staying sharp while on duty. Never mind the canoodling.

(But had he been a leader more like _he, himself_ , had been in the first few years following Eldritch’s death—a bitter, callous, draconian arsehole with an outsized dependence on drink and a heart made of meanness and crumbling-fucking-flint—he’d have seen the two idiots driven out of Britain, entirely, for such a stupid dereliction of a sacred duty. And never mind his own deep hypocrisy for having indicted and punished so harshly.)

News, there had also been from a recently returned Priwen Cadet, playing message-runner: a field-Chaplain deployed across The Channel, in Paris, is successfully grooming an informant . . . an informant who might have word on Lady Charlotte Ashbury, and through her, Elisabeth Ashbury.

A trio of Priwen Brawlers had tracked a pair of leeches that’d braved the night beyond the Docks and sewers, and had taken them down not too long after moonrise. And not too far from Pembroke. One of the Brawlers, a recently promoted Rookie, had suffered a fractured wrist. But other than that and some assorted scrapes and bruises, the trio had come through the set-to fairly well.

“And you did not trouble the Hospital, or its people?” McCullum’s voice sounds barking and accusatory even to his own ears. He’s hardly surprised when these Guards also blanch—especially the recently promoted Rhys, who looks to be all of twenty-two.

At just over half-again the girl’s age, McCullum feels five times older. And the way some others in his Guard look at him makes him feel older, still.

He wonders if this is how Eldritch had felt toward the end and, if so, what that means for himself and his own tenure as leader of the Guard of Priwen.

“We didn’t, sir. As per your standing orders,” swears Dalglish, the Brawler with seniority of the trio, “but, er, that leech that runs it, Dr. Reid, sent some other doctor out to have a look at Rhys’s hand. I s’pose he—er, Reid—heard the scuffle near the Sewer entrance. Bloody leech. But that other doctor . . . erm, somethin’ French, fixed up Rhys’s wrist, quick as y’please, sir!”

“I’m already back in fighting trim, sir!” Rhys adds brightly, if somewhat ludicrously. Her sheep farm-accent is as thick as London fog and it makes McCullum snort.

“That’s well, then,” he says, gruff but not unkind. Though he’s sure his face tells different tale about him. “You’ve done well, lads-and-lass. Priwen stands tall thanks to dedication such as yours. Keep it up, with my thanks.”

The three of them perk up and practically shine from the praise of their superior. It never fails to bemuse McCullum, who—having inherited his fair share of the McCullum _and_ the Greeney blarney and charm, has not used it much in the past fifteen years. He is far from charismatic. Had he even half the quiet, subtle charisma Eldritch had exemplified and wielded in his prime—

Well. _Whatever_ McCullum has . . . that, the rest of the evening off, and a modest bonus (doubled for young Rhys-of-the-sheep-farm-and-the-fractured-wrist) are enough to send the trio on their way. Probably to the nearest pub which does _not_ have their notorious leader lurking in its dimmest, loneliest corner like Bleeding Doom. And sober—as ever he is—to boot.

After a few more minutes of brooding over his second Schweppes soda-water (with a twist of lemon), McCullum gulps the last mouthfuls, leaves Sabrina an outrageous tip as always, and nods his goodbye to Tom Watts.

Behind the bar, the owner of the Turquoise Turtle is cleaning glasses and does not seem to notice anything beyond his current glass. But he nods back.

Huffing and almost smiling, McCullum steps into the surprisingly dry night thinking Watts—who sees and hears much but says relatively little—would have done well by and for Priwen as a Chaplain.

Sniffing the air, and past and behind the _usual_ odors to be had close to a bar just off the Docks, Geoffrey McCullum lets his feet send him away from the Turtle and where they will, for a bit.

This night, for the first time in weeks, he means to save Stonebridge and his nightly vigil at Eldritch’s grave for last. And if he’s lucky, between now and then, he’ll come across a brawl of his own to take weeks of brittle edge off him, if not the bloody massive chips on both his shoulders.

And though he has not had company at Eldritch’s grave for over a month, now—and, in all the years prior to _two months_ ago, he had never had any company there at all—he wonders if the change in his routine . . . the resumption of his old one, rather, will offer any surprises.

But he doubts it. Nor does he hope for that which he doubts—Geoffrey McCullum is built for many things, including struggle, misery, perseverance, and the kind of spite that could move a world, were it properly roused and engaged. But he has long since lost whatever small knack for such a silly intangible as _hope_ he might once have had.

The biggest wants and needs he has ever gotten besides his sainted mother’s love, had been earned by the sweat of his labor and the breaking of his heart . . . and the hardening of his will and his resolve.

It’s a few streets before McCullum realizes his feet are taking him Pembroke-ward by the most direct route.

He has not so much as walked past the Pembroke in weeks nor has he laid eyes on its new administrator in a similar, if slightly briefer timeframe. He hasn’t even patrolled the Poplar Sewers to the exit that opens near the Pembroke.

Grim and glowering, he course-corrects his idiot-traitor feet toward Whitechapel, instead.

Whitechapel . . . with its fearful whispers of a new street-gang flexing its muscle now that the two epidemics simultaneously attacking the city have been brought under semi-control.

In Whitechapel, home to poverty and crime, dirt and raw desperation—and, it should be noted, home to Stonebridge Cemetery—McCullum will not have to _hope_ for the fight he’s been needing. All _he’ll_ have to do is follow his nose and keep sharp for the opportunities that _always_ , sooner or later, present themselves.

He’ll find the fight he needs in Whitechapel, all right. As sure as even the Witching Hour eventually finds the burning purification of dawn.

**NIGHT 8**

“Good evening, vampire hunter.”

Almost smiling to himself, McCullum brushes a stray dead leaf from Eldritch’s well-tended grave.

“Has this—skulking about this graveyard like an anxious, undead bear for the past hour—been your idea of stealthily stalking your prey?” McCullum snorts and still does not look away from Eldritch’s plot, but he does stand. “I felt and heard you the moment you arrived, leech.”

Though his sense for the supernatural is his own domain and business, he knows he’d only _heard_ Reid’s arrival because Reid had meant him to. And if and when Reid ever _truly_ means him ill . . . there’ll certainly be naught in the way of chitchat beforehand.

The weight of that knowledge is almost suffocating. And the weight of McCullum’s weapons is no more or less reassuring than they would be even if he did not have his back to the most powerful leech he’s ever fought. The only leech to ever best him on this far-side of the bulk of his Priwen training and experience.

When the silence draws out between them and McCullum’s hackles are standing taller than himself, he turns to face Reid. No dramatic lurking half-in shadows or fully out of sight, for this modern monster: Reid has kept a circumspect five yards of hazy-gray cemetery evening between them, but there is no attempt at subterfuge. He’s wearing his administrator’s suit and tie under his reinforced duster, but no hat, which strikes McCullum as in-keeping. He has no doubt the leech is armed . . . not that he needs to be. McCullum has heard more than one report of Reid having ripped limbs and heads off other vampires—the mindless, murderous, skulkers who only emerge from the sewers to batten off the barely living or recently dead—with nothing but his strength, claws, and determination.

MCullum’s shivering, however, is due more to the beast’s voice than knowledge of what that beast has done and doubtlessly will do in future.

“Are you here to end me, leech?” He braces himself plainly, presenting the opportunity of a fight-to-the-death, should Reid been in need of entertainment. “You'll find I will not be killed easily.”

Thought that last bit had been meant to bring bitter but shared amusement, the bitterness and amusement are all McCullum’s, as seems to be the theme of recent times. Reid neither smirks nor takes that self-deprecation as bait, merely looks grave and earnest, as ever he does. In the moonlight, his eyes are more ice than fire, at the moment: keen and focused, but somewhat absent and reserved.

Though, that’s likely more to do with him being a posh and genteel West End-er, rather than him being an evil and undead scourge upon humanity. If McCullum has learned one thing from twenty years spent battling leeches and all manner of unholy beasts—and he has learned oh, so many things . . . most of which he wishes he had never needed to—it’s that the only thing to transcend life and death, and good and evil, is bloody _class and station_.

“Not at all, McCullum,” Reid says, soft, but resonant . . . intimate, somehow, despite being projected across the yards of cemetery between them. McCullum represses a small shiver as every molecule of blood in him takes notice and perks up. “I . . . am here because I need you.”

There goes another shiver—a shudder, really—and McCullum swallows, then covers it with a barely stifled chuckle and automatic swagger before answering. “Really? I'm intrigued . . . speak up, then.”

Reid blinks but offers no clues regarding whether he’s noticed or even cares about McCullum’s more-highhanded-than-usual manner. “I need the blood of a king.”

“Do y’now?” McCullum’s voice drips fake sincerity and innocence but his face is derisive and forbidding. “What a shame, then. Figures, the one time I step out my door without that. . . .”

Reid blinks again. Tries again. “I need the blood of Arthur, McCullum. I'm certain that you possess it and . . . I _must_ have it.”

“ _Must_ you?” If this is how it’s to be, no pretenses and posturing between them, McCullum can oblige. And does. “The Guard's most sacred and precious relic? _No_ , of course. That said, I’m curious to hear _why,_ exactly, you think . . . ah.” McCullum’s sigh is heavy and rueful, much like the rest of him. “You found Marshal's memoirs, then? I should have destroyed that book.”

This time, Reid does without the blink before answering. (McCullum briefly wonders if the leech plans and times it like he must have to with other involuntary, _human_ responses which he no longer possess. If so, it’s a failing bid at his former humanity. One that some of his remaining leech-friends—assuming he has any—ought to do him the kindness of pulling up short.)

“I need it, the antidote, to save this city, McCullum.” Those pale eyes have thawed a bit, from icy, to chilly. And though Reid no longer has the relevant metabolic processes to produce body-heat of his own, he radiates other things twice as intensely: determination, fortitude, and the kind of grim honesty McCullum has only seen mere flashes of—with varying durations and intensities—in others.

Even Carl Eldritch, as brash and bold and self-detrimentally _honest_ about himself, his motivations, and the world as any prophet or madman, had not been as miserably _earnest_ as Reid’s apparent default way of being.

McCullum’s a fair reader of people and beasts—he’s had to be, has had to gain a near-instantaneous experts’ read on anyone who’s crossed his path because so very many who _do_ cross his eclectic path end up trying to murder him . . . or eat him—and he’s never had cause to seriously doubt his observations and conclusions. He’s met more than his fair share of liars, predators, and mixes of the two, and Reid . . . well, he’s more than a little predator, to be sure. But even more than that, he’s _honest_.

And right now, he’s telling McCullum what he believes to be truth.

Not that a leech’s beliefs can or should count for much. Yet. . . .

“It is within me to take your words as truth,” McCullum admits reluctantly, and moves closer to Reid before he can stop himself. When he swears blisteringly under his breath, he’s certain Reid—now, only a few feet away—can hear every syllable of it. “I _want_ to, so help me. But I _must_ know more. What precisely are your plans, Reid?”

More of that determination and focus radiates from Reid. It beats like the strong, labored-broken-hopeful heart of the entire world. Like an all-drum marching band that’s playing for their lives, not simply to gin-up audience goodwill.

Those ice-and-flames eyes are far from chilly, now.

Not warm . . . not exactly. But burning. And as mesmerizing as that voice. “I have found the carrier, McCullum—the infection's source. It may be science or some supernatural power that is responsible for all this, but . . . I _will_ harness either or both to end this vampire epidemic.”

Despite the burning ferocity of those eyes, Reid’s voice has dropped to coolth and stone. It still sends shivers racing through McCullum and he laughs outright, this time, genuinely amused. “A determined vampire-doctor. My God, but you're a terrifying creature, Jonathan Emmet Reid!”

Now, despite the unnatural pallor and chill of him, Reid is all fire . . . all ferocious heat in pursuit of his truth and its goals. “Do you not understand we’ve wanted the same thing from the outset: A means to end this epidemic?” His voice is resonant, heated, and demanding. It throbs and pulses and echoes through and throughout McCullum on several levels, rendering him shaken and anxious—no . . . _anticipatory_.

Though, for _what_ , he would rather not examine.

One thing he’s certain of is: If Reid’s using mesmer or thrall now, it’s all instinct . . . startled out of him, like spray from a skunk—no intention other than defensive reflex.

“ _Not enemies_ . . . maybe that _is_ so.” McCullum hangs his head for a moment, calling himself all sorts of fool and rube and pushover. But as he does so, he’s digging into his waistcoat for Eldritch’s flask . . . retrieved by him from the splintered, rubbishy floorboards of the Pembroke’s surgery theatre. After having swooned, post-battle with the most powerful leech he’s ever encountered. After that leech had _spared him_.

He holds the flask out to that leech, wishing he could take satisfaction from the shock writ clearly across that strong and evanescent face. Shock that drives the heat of Reid’s ferocious determination from every line of him, and from those pale and always reddened eyes.

He looks as young as he actually is (thirty-six) in that moment—only two years older than McCullum, as odd as that seems—and maybe a bit younger, still. That’s probably why he’d started wearing that beard after medical school: to distract from his bloody sincerity and youthfulness. Sincerity and youthfulness that even vampirism cannot entirely remove or besmirch, it seems.

McCullum smirks a little, then grims-up almost immediately after, holding out the flask. “Take it, then. I see no other hope for this city,” he adds, to assure the beast that this isn’t _trust_ , simply a lack of any better, saner options.

Again, Reid’s shock reduces his apparent age until McCullum feels closer to Eldritch’s generation than the one he shares with Reid. “If this is some . . . trick, you _will_ be damned . . . Dr. Reid,” McCullum reminds the leech as he takes the flask. This time, what flashes in those eyes is tired and wry and . . . finally, amused.

“I am already damned, McCullum. We both know that.”

“Aye.” McCullum huffs a quick, mirthless sound that’s not really a laugh—the sort of angry-amused sound that would make his own Guard fret and quail—and Reid actually smiles. It’s small and sad and hesitant. It makes him look . . . not _innocent_ , but well-meaning, harried, and tragic.

When the silence has drawn out between them a tiny bit, Reid’s smile falters into his usual solemn expression. Then he opens his mouth as if to say . . . something McCullum is fairly certain he _does not_ want to hear from anyone, but especially from a leech.

Ultimately, Reid wisely contents himself with a nod and a polite, but quietly fervent: “Thank you, McCullum.”

Flustered suddenly and for no reason McCullum grunts his acknowledgement, and Reid turns away, his expression somewhat lightened. But before he’s taken a step, he pauses.

“Might we . . . speak more, hunter? Some other night, perhaps?”

Startled, himself, and all out of his own version of defensive spray, McCullum shrugs and says: “Indeed. Why not?”

But even before he’s started to say that _Why not?_ , Reid has vanished in wisps and gouts of dark smoke. McCullum only just catches a faint whiff of blood and iodine as he finishes his bit of rhetorical irony.

It’s moonset before he stops wondering what in utter _Hell_ has got into him, and returns to his vigil over Eldritch’s prim, tidy grave. It and he continue undisturbed for the rest of that evening.

**MORNING** **-** **5,314**

Geoff McCullum wakes up warm and smiling, but alone in bed. Not for the first time, as Carl tends to sleep little and can barely sit still when there’s aught to do that’s even halfway necessary and productive.

When Geoff squints his eyes open, there’s bright, yellow light shining in the window—far brighter than is usually on-tap in London. Some annoying-bloody-bird is warbling down the sky with a choir of its peers. It’s a busy day outside their small safehouse—one rented floor of a slightly dilapidated townhouse—which they share with none of the other Guard.

Of course, the Guard of Priwen has nothing so ridiculous and give-away as a barracks, but even the meanest safehouses and flats usually keep a minimum of three for safety’s sake, with the maximum being six.

But Geoff and Carl have always been a pair, no third required or wanted. Peas in a pod since the morning after Carl had saved Geoff from the monster wearing his father’s face and through the months it had taken to hunt down the monster wearing his brother’s.

In the five years that have passed since the loss of his world as he’d known it—and the _gain_ of his world as he would _ever-after_ know it—Geoff and Carl have become attached at the hip in more ways than they are not. They live in each other’s back pockets, as Geoff’s own mam (rest her gentle soul) had been known to say of two men who enjoyed a notably close companionship. _Especially_ if both men were what was kindly called “confirmed bachelors.”

Most, if not all the London Guard has sussed out that their leader’s companionship with his lieutenant goes deep, indeed. Those who take issue with their leader sharing his bed with a young man under his command _and_ seventeen years his junior, are careful to keep that opinion close and relatively quiet. They certainly don’t speak of it where _Carl_ can hear.

And even though some of the other Guard increasingly let slip whispers and certain epithets where _Geoff_ can hear them— _Eldritch’s fluff_ or _Eldritch’s Molly_ , if they’re feeling discreet—that doesn’t matter to Geoff. He can take whatever slings and arrows come his way from _eedjits_ and gossips. All that matters is his calling and duty, and _his Carl_ . . . and how he cares for them and never stops trying to be better at that. All that matters is he will never stop doing as right as he can by _both_ while there’s breath and _fight_ in him.

As long as he has those tools to best serve his Order and his love, any _eedjits_ can say any-bloody-thing they want. Geoff’s earned his stripes and his every scar. He’s earned his place in Priwen, in Carl’s estimation—and in Carl’s heart and bed, not that _that_ particular fact is anyone’s lookout but Geoff’s and Carl’s.

He’s _earned_ the _life_ he has wrested back from evil and chaos and tragedy . . . scrap by bloody scrap, heartbeat by bloody-fucking-heartbeat.

As such, Geoff is never not aware of his duties and responsibilities. Of the care he must take to protect and keep this life. He is never not dedicated to his life’s treasure and foundation, which amounts to _Carl_ , and _Carl’s aims_.

The Guard had been a mess of disarray and factioning before Carl had made Geoff his official second. But Geoff had approached his new purview with the deep, single-minded, _bloody-minded_ proactiveness with which he’d approached his entire life since beginning his training to find and end the leech with his brother’s face. Within a year of completing that objective, he’d been made an Executioner—then Lead Executioner of the London chapter not long after. While Geoff had still been continuing to prove his mettle as Lead Executioner, he’d also begun reorganizing and streamlining the finer details of London’s only vampire hunting Order. By the time he’d been _officially_ named Carl’s second, he’d restructured the London shift and crew arrangements and scheduling; expanded and concretized certain networks of informants and spies; added a dedicated and salaried medical division to _all_ operating chapters of greater than ten members; added side-services to the various communities Priwen serves . . . which also brings in steady, if not yet impressive streams of revenue, reputation, and goodwill; and pay-grading, tracking, and bonuses.

Now, Priwen runs like an efficient and powerful warship. Or how Geoff had _used to imagine_ such a thing would run, when he’d had visions of the Royal Navy and adventure dancing in his flighty-dreamy head.

And tangentially, but also importantly, Geoff had early-on convinced his stubborn mentor to hire a good, British accounting firm to deal with his personal finances (which are drawn mainly from several properties in Romania, as well as assets, investments, and holdings related to his family and inheritance) and to let Geoff manage the relatively straightforward expenses and budgeting for Priwen, along with all the other daily details for which Carl has never had patience or talent.

(Really, that either Carl or Priwen had had any resources left at all by the time Geoff took over managing the latter—what with Carl pouring so much of his own money into Priwen in the early days of his bold, but fiscally profligate leadership—had been a sheer-bloody-marvel. Yet, Geoff’s tireless determination and stubborn tenacity had been more than a match for Carl’s legendary possession of the same, at least in this instance. Had been what it took to draw a more seemly and circumspect dividing line between the various financial resources of Priwen and the various financial resources of one self-exiled Wallachian noble . . . or perhaps . . . _royal_. Geoff legitimately doesn’t know the pedigree or age of Carl’s bloodline or how endless his seemingly endless money actually is. And he for-certain has no idea why “Carl Eldritch” has opted to exile himself from his homeland. Otherwise forthright Carl is kindly, but unmovably mum on these subjects).

But such is life, Geoff knows: made mostly of daily details and only sporadically seasoned with epic victories and tragedies. Carl is a great man, made to field more of the latter than the former. And as his second Geoff makes sure that can be so to the best of his and Priwen’s ability. His mission in life, other than helping to protect humanity from its vilest plague, is making sure that Carl Eldritch, the man who had been _born_ to lead Britain’s front of the continuing War, is not bothered by inconsequentialities and banalities.

Geoff is entirely content with that life. Content that his close and near-prescient management of the nuts and bolts of Priwen is much of the reason for their increased success, of late. Content that his efforts at organizing and regulating have helped more than double the membership in the London chapter. Content that he has the ear, admiration, and faith of the most prolific and successful vampire hunter in the whole of Britain. Not to mention his fondness and love. . . .

_More than content_ that _he’s_ the only one who gets to lie late in that vampire hunter’s bed of a morning, daydreaming about the way that vampire hunter clutches at him and gasps his name (“JYOH-frih”) like a prayer when they lie together. That _he’s_ the only one who sees the wonder-soft way that vampire hunter looks at him in domestic moments and smiles at him when they wake up . . . as if every morning he wakes up next to Geoff is the _best_ gift in a life that’s been full of good gifts.

The way that vampire hunter gushes in breathless, _dirty-sounding_ Romanian while riding Geoff’s lucky prick like a Yank cowboy at a bloody rodeo. Though, sometimes, the breathless dirty-talk is in Hungarian, German, or Russian . . . or _very_ dodgy sounding “Italian.”

(And, sometimes, all five at once, peppered into his somewhat broken English like the oddest, least intelligible love song anyone has ever sung. . . .)

Lying abed and fantasizing about Carl Eldritch—and indolently wanking while doing so—is an activity Geoff could do all day to pay the rent yet still keep it as a hobby. But he, like his departed mentor, has things to see to and missions to complete or at least advance. Despite his enjoyment of lazing in bed and wanking even when Carl isn’t actually with him to make it _truly_ blissful. . . .

But Geoff is not a lazy or lazing man by nature, and does not even bother to finish his wank. Not when later in the afternoon or in the very early evening, Carl will not only help with Geoff’s . . . affliction but will be very appreciative of the vigor with which Geoff works it out of his system.

Thus, Geoff has washed up, dressed, and is out the door in one-quarter of an hour, a spring firmly in his step. Within the same hour, he’s glower-deep in his duties and the make-work he can’t yet afford to delegate.

When Geoff returns to their safehouse just before sundown, everything in their rooms is still pin-neat and undisturbed: the way Geoff always leaves it and the way Carl never would—even if he’d stopped back in just to change his jacket or collect extra stakes or his battle-axe.

Carl hasn’t been home since before Geoff had gone . . . more than twelve hours, then.

Within _this_ hour, every able-bodied Guard—a grim, silent Geoff included—is out on the hunt for their officially _Missing, in action_ leader.

One day hence, Carl Eldritch is listed in the rolls as _Missing, presumed dead_.

Two days hence, Carl Eldritch is listed as _Killed in action_. His former lieutenant and the new leader of the Guard of Priwen has Eldritch’s name stricken from all active rosters and added to Priwen’s official chronicles as well as its roll of **Guards of Valor and Distinction**. Both will be months in the telling to be done as befits Eldritch’s life and legacy.

The quiet, modestly attended funeral is held on the third day and officiated by the vile, shite-mean and shite-stupid Fr. Tobias Whitaker. The venomous, old priest sermonizes overlong about the wages of sin being death, while eyeing Priwen’s new, young leader pointedly . . . as if trying to cow and shame him.

The funeral ends early by dint of said new, young leader leaping over Eldritch’s coffin and throttling Fr. Whitaker near-to-death.

Whitaker survives and kindly does not press charges—keeps his mouth shut thereafter, on the subject of Carl Eldritch and his sins. He also is _kindly_ allowed to _continue surviving_ with his head on his neck.

Within the first month of his ruthless, bloody, iron-fisted leadership, Guard of Priwen’s new leader has purged the disloyal and doubting, and reinforced the ties of those who have chosen to stay. To re-dedicate themselves to Eldritch’s—to _Priwen’s_ vision. And to his own.

By the end of five years—almost halfway through their leader’s own twenty-fifth year—no one in Priwen remembers or speaks of Eldritch as anything other than sanitized, time-faded legend. And even if they do, they are smart enough not to do so near Geoffrey McCullum. Especially at the end of a hard-fighting and hard-drinking night. Which is as many such nights as Priwen’s leader can make happen.

**NIGHT 18**

“Good evening, vampire hunter.”

McCullum grunts, but does not look up from Eldritch’s grave. He’s given too much bloody response as it is, what with Reid’s unexpected-but-anticipated arrival setting his pulse racing and juddering loud enough for any leech to hear . . . and his heart beating like a hammer on the anvil of the night.

Reid does not join him at Eldritch’s grave, merely watches from his distance: quiet, present, and thrilling-alarming.

“I . . . did not wish to disturb you, but I thought you might care to hear this as soon as I was able to inform you.” Reid pauses—which is odd, since he’s rarely dramatic and assuredly not on-purpose even when he is. McCullum turns his head enough to see the lighter shade of Reid’s coat against the backdrop of semi-occluded moonlight and dry, cemetery evening.

“Well? Inform me, then, if you’ve news that warrants interrupting my vigil.”

“Our city’s vampire epidemic, at least, will trouble us no further,” Reid says, soft and barely audible, just like the sigh that follows it. “As for our Influenza outbreak. . . I, like the rest of the city, work to get this plague under control and ceased by year’s-end. As far as our efforts toward that go, I am . . . increasingly hopeful.”

This news, both halves of it, sees McCullum on his feet and turning to face Reid. He cannot help the gasp that escapes him upon seeing _Dr. Leech_ looking every bit as dead and diminished as he ought, but never has.

“Do you speak truly? If not, I _will_ kill you, useful monster or not,” McCullum growls, though it sounds forced. If only because he knows that’s not what he really wants to demand of Reid.

For Reid stands, as usual, some yards away, leaning against a tall, elaborate headstone not as affectation but as support. He’s sheet-white—more so than usual, even—gaunt, and sickly-looking. His suit and duster seem to bag on his long, strong frame, as if he’s lost a dangerous amount of weight and mass . . . resulting in the normally sturdy, if rangy leech looking frail and wasted. Like skin and weariness hanging off good, solid bones. Like—

—like he should be _under_ the stone upon which he currently relies, and no one’s had the heart to tell him so, yet.

“I have never lied to you, McCullum. I see no reason to start now. The Disaster has been put down and can no longer spread its . . . disease. The worst of the rise in _skal_ activity has been halted and will lessen steadily, due to drastically lower infection rates, and the continued efforts of Priwen. And other . . . interested parties.”

McCullum purses his lips in disdain and disapproval. “You mean those prickless, bloody navel-gazers in the Brotherhood of Saint Paul’s Stole?”

A genteel, conceding nod. “Them, as well, if you wish it.”

“I wish nothing of them but their extinction.” Huffing, McCullum gives Reid a pointed twice-over. “And is _that_ where you’ve been the past seven nights? Putting down a Disaster? Aye, I’d believe that, from the look of you. And I’d envy your stamina, if I didn’t know what you’ve paid for it.”

Reid tenders a tired, faltering smile. “The Disaster only accounts for the first two nights. The rest have been . . . necessary recovery time.”

McCullum’s brows shoot up, but Reid does not offer further clarification, merely sags a little and sighs. “I expect your Guard of Priwen will find that their nights grow rather less busy, as time marches on. Likely to stay that way, for the next several years, if we’re all very lucky. There’ve never been _two_ Disasters in the same decade, at least.”

“ _Never_ , eh?” McCullum’s brows shoot up even higher . . . then he rolls his eyes. “Ha. The famous last word of fools.”

Reid’s small smile turns amused and conciliatory once more. “Again: as you say. What, then, will the Guard of Priwen do, should they find themselves at loose-ends? Will you stop the Great Hunt?”

McCullum frowns and doesn’t confirm something on which he has no certainties—at least none by which he’s pleased. “We shall continue to protect innocents from beasts like you and your . . . friend.”

“Like _me_?” Reid’s tone is barely inflected, but it’s noticeable from a man whose tone is normally eerily modulated and even. He sounds offended or almost hurt—he certainly seems more than a bit of both. That should give McCullum at least a little vicious satisfaction, but it only makes him feel as tired as Reid looks. Makes him realize his own futility.

“I _might_ feel . . . indebted to you for sparing me at Pembroke. For the next while, I suppose. But this won't always be the case.” It’s an obvious truth to them both, though McCullum feels as surprised to hear himself say it as Reid seems to be. He hurries on, looking away from Reid’s clear, unshielded gaze. “I am no coward, like those Saint Paul's Stole-arseholes. No deluded traitor to humanity, either, like your Dr. Swansea. _Nor_ am I a wolf in sheep’s clothing, like your redheaded lady-leech.”

Reid suddenly perks up, looking markedly less tired and done in. “Ah. My . . . _friend_.”

McCullum glares at a distant grave to his left, flexing and curling the hand and fingers of his crossbow-arm. “We saw you meeting the erstwhile Lady Ashbury from weeks ago. So, _of course_ , we investigated.”

Reid is silent for what feels like a century. McCullum’s anxiety and anger and _guilt_ ratchet higher with each passing second of that century, too.

“And . . . what do you suppose you know of . . . my redheaded lady?” Reid once again settles into his weariness like a comfortable, old chair. “Where is she? What will you do to her?”

“She’s gone, as you must already have surmised. But Priwen’s had no hand in it. Our scouts reported she sold some paintings and departed for the Continent. And one of our informants spotted her daughter and those paintings on the way to Paris nearly two weeks ago, but we’ve had no sign since.” Moved by an impulse that he cannot easily label, but that it’s at least as curious as it is cruel, he asks: “Did you fancy yourself in love with her, Reid? Visions of an old-fashioned courtship dancing in that big, posh brain of yours?”

A ripple of emotion, subtle but intense, passes across Reid’s bloodless face—too subtle for even McCullum to parse and too intense for him to truly want to. Then Reid turns away, seeming neither angry nor sad, simply thrashed and closed-off and exhausted. “ _Adieu_ , vampire hunter.”

“Until we meet again, blood drinker,” is McCullum’s sardonic, somewhat self-mocking reply. But Reid, of course, is long gone. Vanished, leaving only the scents of blood and astringents behind—and McCullum’s mounting but sourceless frustrations—to prove he’d been there at all.

**NIGHT 33**

“Good evening, vampire hunter.”

“That, it was, leech,” McCullum replies without looking up from his usual vigil. His bark is relatively biteless tonight and Reid can likely tell. Not that he’d rise to the bait even if it had not been. “You’re out and about early, for you—even beat _me_ here. Took the night off from paperwork and eating patients, eh?”

“I would respond by indulging your irreverence, but that I’ve no interest in a brawl-to-the-death, tonight. And one can never tell how a Guard of Priwen is apt to take _anything_ — _especially_ the irreverence of a leech.”

McCullum snorts. Reid has the right of _that_. Priwen certainly reflects its leader’s mores and temperament.

He glances away from Eldritch’s grave and finds he’s relieved to do so. But he tells himself that’s only because it’s his duty to mark and remember the plot over which _Reid_ had been standing—and clearly had been for some time before McCullum had arrived at midnight.

Any tiny detail about any enemy can eventually be turned into a weakness, McCullum has found.

He and Reid kneel and stand, respectively, over Eldritch’s plain headstone—it bears only the name he had been known by in Britain, the date of his death, and Priwen’s motto.

“Who is he, that he brings you here of a night, vampire hunter?”

Startled by Reid’s voice from so near—not any closer than he had been moments ago, but closer than he’d been to McCullum since their confrontation at Pembroke Hospital—McCullum looks up at Reid, feeling instantly defensive and suspicious. Then, before he can let-fly with the sort of barbed retort that advertises a very sore spot, indeed—a tiny detail of _weakness_ —he aims his eyes back at Eldritch’s grave. And he tells the truth the way his older brother, Ian, had once taught him, when they were wee: Plain and utterly factual. Told in a way that takes out all the juice and sting, all the _story_ from it.

“He’s . . . he was the man who saved me after the murder of my family. He's buried here.”

He can still feel Reid’s piercing, observant gaze on him: bracing and chill yet warm in a way he cannot identify. “Were they . . . was it vampires?”

“Yes,” _and yet worse_ , McCullum manages not to say. “When I was fifteen, a vampire that used to be my father turned my brother and tore out my mother's throat. There is not a waking hour of my life since, in which I have not recalled the sounds she made, during and after.” He can’t quite hold back _that_ finer point of the truth he’d meant to neuter. “Carl Eldritch, one-time leader of Priwen, killed my father in front of me, just as I was about to get the same treatment as my mother had. Carl trained me to kill leeches and helped me hunt what was left of my brother. Upon making that kill, I was immediately inducted into Priwen as a Cadet.”

“I see. So, after your family was taken from you, this Carl Eldritch . . . took you in and raised you.”

“Ahh.” McCullum’s brows wiggle as he fights to keep them from meeting his hairline. He purses his twitching lips and does not shift his eyes from Eldritch’s headstone. “Aye. It could be said he raised me, in part, certainly.” He clears his throat over an ironic laugh and refrains from specifying _which_ parts of him Carl had done such a grand, effortless job of _raising_ , practically from the morning they’d formally met. “Why are _you_ here, Reid . . . when _here_ you are, that is?”

The hesitation is slight but noticeable. “To pay my respects and . . . to recall and remember.”

“Whom?”

Reid still gazes at him, measuring and cool, but McCullum doesn’t dare to look at Reid, just yet. As ever he can feel that fiery freeze of a stare on him like moonlight given physical mass and feel the echo of every syllable in every nucleus of every molecule of all his blood.

“The first unfortunate to cross my path after I was turned. I woke up in Southwark, weak and delirious . . . and so agonizingly _thirsty_. Then, I noticed her heartbeat . . . as loud as god-drums. As loud as the roar of a river that could _slake_ that awful thirst.” The sound Reid makes is more anguished than angry. “Had I any idea at the time what had happened to me—and that giving in to that . . . Eternal Thirst without fighting to _control it_ would lead to the greatest misery of my life and others . . . well, perhaps that would have made a difference. Perhaps not. But I’m certain you’ve heard many sob-stories from many vampires you’ve met. I won’t tax you with the details of mine.”

Reid, posh and genteel West End-er that he is, hadn’t added the obvious: _before you slaughtered them_ , after his assumption. But he didn’t have to. McCullum shrugs and doesn’t answer either way.

Even in his varied experience, only one leech has ever offered him any kind of sob-story. And McCullum’d held firm despite the pangs that sob-story had caused. Despite every bit of him wanting _so badly_ to believe and _trust_ , and to cling to all the treasured things that had suddenly become eternally impossible.

So silent and lost in his extended funk is McCullum for long minutes, thereafter, that it’s some time before he notices that Reid has vanished, as is his wont more often than it isn’t.

When the Witching Hour draws nigh, McCullum abandons his nightly vigil for the last of his duties of the evening.

A few reluctant yards from the gates of Stonebridge brings him back within its bounds. Not to Eldritch’s grave, but to the grave over which Reid had been brooding hours prior:

**Mary Gwendolyn Reid**

**Loving and beloved daughter, sister, wife, and mother.**

**Cherished by all and resting in the Everlasting Arms.**

**1885 - 1918**

**(EARLY) MORNING 68**

“Could you be makin’ ‘em any fucking smaller, Reid?” McCullum demands as Reid finishes the last of the stitches. “Suffering _Christ_! I’m not here to be entertainment or a practice dummy for your sewing skills!”

The good doctor doesn’t shift his gaze or his steady hand at McCullum’s sudden bark. His face is eerily still and he hasn’t blinked for at least one-quarter of an hour—maybe not even since they’d arrived at his office almost two hours ago.

Aside from Reid’s neat, fussy-tiny stitches, McCullum’s battered arm looks like shite.

It doesn’t _feel_ too grand, either. Neither does the rest of McCullum’s bruised and lacerated body. He’d taken a fair to middling number of body-blows from the “street gang,” but the worst of it is his left arm, a goose-egg on the left side of his head, and a face that looks almost as bad as the arm, for lacerations and bruises.

His ribs are tender and coloring up nicely, the latter of which McCullum can track, since he’s unclothed from the waist, up, but for a few bandages.

All things considered, the attempt to restrain his impatience and temper are half-arsed. He hasn’t much practice with that particular sort of self-control. For more than half his life there have been easy and acceptable outlets for his temper and other unpleasant moods. Not so much, anymore, as Reid had predicted some weeks ago. Now, the only place to turn that temper is inward and, it turns out, there’s plenty _within_ McCullum for him to rage at, only . . . once focused inward, it’s nothing so useful and motivating as rage.

Turned inward, it’s simply grief, self-hatred, and despair.

They’ve been tearing him apart for weeks. Possibly years. And without his oldest and most regular outlet, it’s been more than a struggle, holding himself back from unleashing his temper on Reid. From giving in to his appetite for fighting and a spot of slaughter.

Never mind that the very leech in question is patching up his arm after patching up the rest of him, and rescuing him from his own turned-traitor men.

Certainly, some kinds of restraint are always a job of work, but tonight, after being ambushed by his own Guard over—among other things—the nature of his armistice with Reid . . . McCullum is in no fit state for self-control.

And as temptations go, Reid is a large one, indeed.

But he fights that temptation anyway, and has been since Reid had spirited them into his office without being seen by any of the Pembroke staff or patients. He tries, if only because Reid had saved his life a couple hours ago. Saved McCullum from his own men and from far worse than the partial drubbing he had received when they’d done dragging him to their hidey-hole for “questioning and further judgment.”

McCullum . . . is trying. At least a little. But he barely has the wherewithal to stay upright under the weight of recent events—the weight of his life. Being polite, even just to the point of not appearing a bloody ingrate, keeps slipping from his tired, shaky grasp.

And every time he catches himself glaring at Reid, or at Reid’s stupid-fancy carpet, at the pristine grandfather clock and detailed globe between the tall and heavily-curtained windows, at Reid’s many books on their many shelves . . . and at Reid’s bloody-stupid pet plant— _Lisa_ , he’d said he’d named it, and that had made McCullum even more angry than he had been amused—his control slips more.

Reid is not unaware of this.

As usual, _his_ self-control and discretion seem fixed and flawless, since he’d laconically bade McCullum to remove his duster, waistcoat, and shirts—and eighty percent of his bloody armor and arms. It’d felt perilous at best, but McCullum had done it, while Reid had prepped his exam table and cleaned his hands.

And he’s been under Reid’s clinical and unnerving gaze ever since. But the endless minutes involving the needle and thread have been _especially lovely_.

McCullum growls again, but at this point he doubts he could even take _Lisa_ in a fair fight. Leech, Reid is, but the man knows how to keep living things alive and well . . . keep them ticking along like a clock. _Lisa_ is healthier in this moment than McCullum will be for some days.

“You’re fucking ridiculous, y’know,” McCullum grits—more to himself, than to Reid or Lisa—when Reid is almost done and applying even more antiseptic to the already screaming-throbbing area. Even though McCullum’s arm had been liberally numbed after being initially cleaned, he’s still aching and anxious and enraged. Wired on adrenaline and the reality of betrayal by his own.

He has no idea how far it spreads or how deep it goes . . . who’s been compromised and whom he can still trust, as far as he trusts anyone.

“You marched pell-mell into a dangerous situation in Whitechapel without any sort of back-up or apparent plan, only to be set-upon, captured, and partially tortured. By ‘hoodlums’ who seemed to know a great deal about you, as well as being unusually skilled fighters for a common street gang. Had I not . . . happened across the situation, you would be dead, now. In the aftermath of all that, I’m treating your injuries despite your continuing threats to my person. Yet _I’m_ the . . . _fucking ridiculous_ one?” Reid’s tone is calm and distant— _disinterested_ . . . the very soul of dispassionate rationality and logic. “Although, I suppose that _I am_ the ridiculous one, after all. _You_ are simply being . . . you.”

“Fuck _you_ , leech. I am in _no mood_ for your derision—for fucking _reason_ from a goddamn fucking _leech_ -doctor,” is McCullum’s gritted and grating response as he stares holes in Reid’s downturned, face—all-but willing the beast to meet his gaze and speak more on _who_ is the ridiculous one of them both.

But Reid doesn’t look up until the stitches are done. His pallid, mournful face looks especially so. Illuminated by the light above his exam table, his irises are colorless panes of glass in their seas of irritated-looking pink.

“You needn’t take everything I say as an intended jab, vampire hunter. I certainly don’t mean to be antagonizing, even now.” Reid’s voice is as strong and resonant and compelling as ever—more so, somehow. McCullum drops his gaze from those earnest, blue-blue eyes. He’s already had more than a night of it, just with keeping himself alive and ambulatory . . . never mind courting the raw and utterly alarming pandemonium that comes of listening to Reid’s voice while keeping Reid’s gaze. Bad enough, McCullum had already swooned once, almost immediately after refusing to let Reid carry him back to the Pembroke—had woken up in a right state: weak, but energized. Aching and sore, yet ready to brawl.

The fact that he’d been in the safest place left for him—with betrayal from Priwen, or even just a rogue faction of it—hadn’t improved his mood. It had not damped his need to express his anxiety and rage in the ways that have best suited him for more than half his life. . . .

The carefully constructed world which he’s built and maintained for himself is or perhaps always has been built on sand.

“. . . assure you that most of what you take to be jabs from me are . . . compliments gone awry or simple observations that I should have kept to myself, if only for the sake of discretion.”

The silence goes on for far too long after Reid’s done speaking. McCullum can’t seem to shake himself out of a sudden, drifting reverie.

For he’s finally moved from the epiphany of realizing how askew it’s all gone—his life, Priwen, _everything_ —to the rock-bottom acceptance of that objective fact. It had started going wrong when his parents and brother were killed. Went more wrong, still, when he’d had to hunt the thing wearing his brother’s face. More wrong, _still_ , when Carl had run off on his own and got bloody turned. Wronger and wronger, in the years immediately after that, with McCullum running off the rails of sanity, sobriety, and even humanity. And even after he’d saned up (somewhat) and sobered up (entirely, and still going for almost ten years) the wrong had slowed but marched steadily onward.

And onward and onward.

Yet, McCullum had always stood in that same place he’d been after losing his family. No, McCullum had never really traveled the slightest distance from the boy who’d had to kill his big brother. The young man who’d had to bury his lover. The angry firebrand and bully who’d turned Priwen into his personal vengeance machine because of his own _Eternal Thirst_ , which could never be slaked even with the blood of all the leeches who ever were or would be.

The path he’s on is a dead-end that has never lead to anywhere but the same circles that’ve turned rut. That will eventually become his lonely grave. And unlike Carl’s plot, there’ll be no one to tend his, even if there’s anyone to bother about securing him one.

Geoffrey McCullum’s heart beats not like a hammer—not anymore. It frets and patters like rain. Like Heaven’s tears, gone long unheeded.

“Hunter?”

He doesn’t hear Reid’s voice, but he sees Reid’s pale, spare mouth form the words. He realizes he’s been staring at Reid’s mouth as if trying to divine the secrets of the bloody cosmos and that _that_ is the sort of thing that could lead to nothing but troubles and more troubles. And yet he still stares. Not because he finds the leech’s mouth as compelling as his voice—McCullum has encountered _nothing_ as compelling as that voice, except perhaps Carl Eldritch’s dark, haunted eyes before and after he had been turned—but because every bit of his energy has gone to keeping him upright and cogent. Keeping him marginally functioning, as the acceptance of the absolute failure of his entire life rolls through him and settles.

Sinks marrow- and soul-deep.

“McCullum?”

He wishes his heart would go back to the hammer-beats he’s lived with for most of his life . . . go back to the fear and rage and spite that had kept him determined and moving and certain. Invincible. This slower and gentler . . . sadder beat is unbearable. It’s breaking him and taking the express-route to do so.

How had he ever borne the so-called gentler spectrum of human emotion? Had it always been so enervating and weighty? So disarming?

How can a heart keep beating under the weight of the loss of everything, without tossing those softer, bleaker emotions aside?

_How_ can a man who has lived on little but fear and rage, spite and grief-fueled vengeance for most of his life ever run on anything else? How could there even be _anything else_ for him to run on?

“ _GEOFFREY MCCULLUM_. COME BACK. _RESPOND_.”

Acting on nearly two decades worth of honed instinct and ability—and despite the severity of his injuries and the battered-leaden state of his limbs—McCullum has the leech tackled and pinned to his own exam table in one bare second. Most of the medical implements scatter across the table and to the floor. But his injured left hand has grabbed a pair of medical scissors. The whole of his scraped right arm he’s brought down on the back of the leech’s neck, along with nearly all his weight.

“How’s _that_ for a response, you Hell-spawned bastard?” he growls, shaking and weeping, though he’s only distantly aware of that latter. He leans the rest of his weight onto Reid’s neck. He’s tempted to crush it, but it’d barely slow Reid down and certainly brass him off. And it _might_ earn McCullum more of a fight than he’s in a state to handle. “Don’t you _ever_ try to mesmer me again or I’ll put you down! Mark my words!”

Reid neither bucks nor struggles under McCullum’s weight. Nor does he breathe or fight to, and that will never not jar McCullum.

“Goddamn lee—” before he can finish his blasphemy, Reid vanishes—predictably, or it would have been predictable had McCullum not been so exhausted, injured, and . . . compromised by recent and less recent events. Predictable and counter-able.

Instead, McCullum goes sprawling on his belly across the exam table, the wind driven from him. The only reason he doesn’t slide off it in his winded and wounded state is Reid completing the reversal of their positions: Arm not braced on McCullum’s neck but negligently left there, with increasing pressure and probably less-than-none of Reid’s full strength.

Where the leech’s other hand is, McCullum doesn’t bother to guess. If Reid wants him dead, dead he will be.

“Why do you insist upon being . . . _beyond_ unreasonable, really? Have you actually gone mad? Madder, _yet_?” Reid asks, still calm, stern, and unruffled. Unwinded, too, of course. McCullum, however, is on such high alert he can’t even speak. His heart is going like hammers, at last and again. Like the god-drums of which Reid spoke, and a river that roars of thirsts slaked when any fool in his right mind could tell that each draught from such rivers only belies that.

Once again, he fights not to struggle—not to give this leech the satisfaction of a rage that had once served and is now master, more than it is not. He is at its mercy now . . . at the mercy of that to which he’s long-since ceded primacy.

In this, as with many other things it seems, Reid has succeeded where Geoffrey McCullum has failed and fallen short.

“If you’re going to kill me, go right ahead, _doctor_. But spare me the holier-than-thou analysis beforehand, if you spare me in no other way,” McCullum manages to gulp out, desperate and broken-sounding. Embarrassing and shameful. But Reid merely huffs, prim and annoyed, as if McCullum _hasn’t_ shamed himself deeply. As if he’s merely being a difficult and obstinate man, and not a pathetic and utterly lost one.

The pressure and weight of Reid—he’s a tall drink of dead, no doubt, and heavier than he looks to be—increases. He seems to radiate chill and stillness, and he smells of antiseptic and blood . . . not his own, though. “Damn you—why _must_ you be so stubborn? Why do you _insist_ on expanding a gulf that need not exist in the first place?”

“Neither of us knows what in Hell you’re talking about, Reid.” McCullum’s chuckle is gargling and sounds more like barking sobs than laughter. “But _if_ it’s another fight you’re spoiling for . . . let me up and we’ll see what’s what.”

“There’s no reason to kill you nor do I wish to. I should think that would be obvious. And we’ve already fought. You recall how that ended.” Reid pauses when McCullum wheezes out a labored growl but accepts that as acknowledgement and goes on. “Attempting to beard me in my own den, from this distance—and in _that moment and position_ . . . all things considered, _a fight_ was not the response you were courting, McCullum.”

McCullum’s mind is still quick enough to add _those_ numbers up. He starts to struggle, and damn any thoughts of not giving leeches satisfaction. He’d rather give the satisfaction of an ineffective struggle than to give the impression that he is amenable to Reid’s intentions—

“Stop, Geoffrey,” Reid says, quiet and kind, and McCullum does. Instantly, and no mesmer required. The shame of that self-knowledge burns, as does so much of McCullum’s shame. But it’s still eclipsed by the anticipation that has grown to dwarf it. “I will never hurt you or force upon you something not of your choosing.”

“The bloody hell’s _that_ supposed to mean, Reid?” McCullum demands, both wheezy and screechy, now . . . panicked and bereaved. Suddenly, the shame’s starting to catch up with his flagging anticipation.

Reid’s weight and pressure lessen almost entirely even as he leans in closer, until his breath—rather, the measured shuttles of air with which he makes speech happen—chills McCullum’s cheek.

“I know your attackers were no mere Whitechapel hoodlums. They were defectors from your Priwen—recently loyal members, or so they had seemed. Had I not been increasingly worried for you these few weeks . . . had I not kept an eye on you as my duties at Pembroke have allowed . . . you would be dead. Because of Priwen.”

McCullum really starts resisting and struggling, now . . . though, not against Reid’s gentle, if implacable restraint. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, blood drinker. You don’t know—”

“I know that Priwen was once a medicine for what ailed London . . . and a palliative for what ails _you_. But now that the entrenched fever it treated is passing . . . the medicine shall become a toxin, if it is not reduced and tightly controlled . . . or weened, altogether.”

“Are—are you _threatening my men_?” McCullum gasps, his heart hammering harder, to the trio of beats it knows best: FEAR-RAGE-REVENGE.

“Certainly not,” Reid says, sounding miserable and hesitant. He moves away from McCullum completely. Yet despite the lack of Reid’s . . . lack-of-body heat, McCullum feels colder, for some reason. He feels achy and stiff as he straightens and turns to face Reid, who watches him somberly from his customary several yards back, at his desk. “But I can _promise_ , were any to lay a hand on you again, I . . . would willingly be culpable for the actions I took in response.” At McCullum’s redoubled scowling, Reid sighs. “I will not harm innocents ever again. And I will _protect them_ at whatever cost is required of me.”

“I’m no innocent, Reid. My soul’s as dirty and damned as yours, reasons and results aside.” McCullum shoves himself away from the exam-space and into Reid’s office proper. Closer, it’s to be noted, to Reid, himself. “And you _really_ cannot afford to make an all-out enemy of Priwen, leech—not twice.”

Reid frowns and his brows shoot up. “Losing a not-quite-armistice with the Guard of Priwen does not matter to me.”

McCullum is both surprised and not. “Then what _does_ , leech?”

“Protecting someone for whom I care and whom I have come to value.” When McCullum can only stare, Reid’s gaze somehow turns sadder. “Do you even recall what it is to value a single person simply because you do? Rather than mourning this mythic _humanity_ you and your Priwen never cease to trot out as helpless lambs that excuse your vicious, often unethical behavior?”

McCullum grins and shakes his head, even though it makes the room spin. “Is this about to be a lecture on ethics from the leech—pardon _me_ , Your Fanciness, from _the_ _ekon_? Is a monster about to sermonize to _me_ on how to be an upright _man_?”

“And it always comes back to that, doesn’t it?” Suddenly, Reid is right there, dead-ahead: close enough for McCullum to smell blood and antiseptic again. Close enough for a fight or a . . . or any number of unwise possibilities. His eyes are a whirl of pale and pink that seems to capture light even as it repels it. “We have fought with and beside each other. Back-to-back. If fighting tells a person’s true nature, then no one—living or undead—knows me better than _you_ , Geoffrey McCullum. And yet,” he muses, trailing off and casting that piercing gaze downward. At McCullum’s left arm. “And yet, to you, I will only _ever_ be a _somewhat useful_ monster.”

There go those mystifying, irritating, painful pangs of shame and guilt, again. As if _McCullum’s_ the monster of the two of them. “As I’ve said, Reid, my lapses in judgment—disguised as civility—aside, Priwen does not negotiate and—”

“—doesn’t compromise, yes, I know. And . . . neither do you.” Reid’s mouth twitches at the corners, self-mocking and wry, as he sidles leftward and away from McCullum. “I don’t expect you to change, McCullum—and certainly not because of me. I wouldn’t ask that of you nor truly want it, I suppose.”

“Then, what _would_ you ask of me?” McCullum demands, curious again, but even more weary. He drifts toward and leans against Reid’s desk with a soundless sigh. “What is it you want of me, Reid? Let’s have the plainspoken truth between us, at last.”

A silence falls that is replete with Reid not struggling for his answer but struggling against it. Just this once, he fails at something that matters.

“I . . . wish to be a man to you,” he says, meeting McCullum’s gaze with his own. Color aside, that gaze seems to be entirely flames, now. “I wish to be _a man_ whom you hate and perhaps eventually come to not hate. I wish to be _a man_ whom you tolerate, and perhaps come to respect and accept. _A man_ whom you _trust_ or, more likely, give a longer rein which you only sparingly yank back.” That steady gaze is the heart of heat, no chill to be found. “I wish to be _a man_ to you, Geoffrey, rather than a monster.”

“And is that _all_ you wish to be to me?” McCullum asks on the back of a whooshing breath he hadn’t been aware of holding in. Reid blinks once, then again, and that heated honesty is shuttered as he looks down, his small smile still self-mocking.

“That is . . . enough, for now. It’s a start.” Reid’s tone is muffled-meek and vaguely embarrassed. Chagrined. “And more of one than I have a right to want, yes. But that _is_ what I want, and you _did_ ask.”

“I did.” So help him, for his asinine, poorly-considered curiosity. It’s a miracle _that_ hasn’t killed him, yet. “And what _I_ want and what it’s safe to _allow_ _myself_ are often opposing things. With good reason and of necessity, and that’s unlikely to _ever_ change.” 

“Understood,” Reid murmurs, his gaze still averted, this time to Dr. Swansea’s globe. He seems tense and tired and sad. McCullum knows that tune all too well, of late, and _so help him_ . . . he’s sorry that anyone, even Reid, is singing it because of him.

None of McCullum’s life had been meant to go this way.

Sighing, he means to push himself upright and away from Reid’s desk. Away from Reid. It takes a minute but he manages. He steps past the doctor decisively, and toward the exit. “I should take myself to a safehouse.”

“Any of your known safehouses are now only one of those things, McCullum,” Reid says, with the calm near-indifference that’s the closest he seems to come to camouflaging his feelings. “You are welcome to a bed at Pembroke. A bed in the infirmary,” he clarifies, clearing his throat even though he wouldn’t have _needed to_ since being turned. “No one observed our arrival here and this is sacred ground.”

“As if that stopped my men before.” McCullum snorts and shakes his head, turning back to Reid. The doctor is already half-turned away from McCullum and gracefully concedes the point with a brief bow of his head.

“But there is nothing that happens in this hospital that I cannot hear—nowhere in this hospital I cannot _be_ near-instantaneously, should I need to. And _ekons_ are known to be . . . vigilant and creative when it comes to defending their territory from threats and usurpers.”

“So, I’m your _territory_ , am I? At least while I’m here?” McCullum’s chuckle is rough but amused. As it so often seems to be around Reid. “A vampire with a pet vampire _hunter_? What would the _ekon_ -Upper Ten say about _that_ , Dr. Reid?”

“Undoubtedly, something along the lines of what your Priwen would ‘say.’ If _ekons_ kept any sort of society, at all.” Reid’s sigh is quiet, but deep. “You raise a valid concern, however. If it becomes known that you’ve taken refuge here, Priwen, at least, will talk.”

“And? Priwen has _already_ been talking and tonight was certainly proof of that. Sooner rather than later, I’ll have to have some words of my own, in response.” Though, that wouldn’t be today or the next, if McCullum can keep himself under control and hold onto the common sense that had absconded entirely, twenty years go. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to work to undo the results of the idle gossip of _eedjits_ and detractors. I am out of practice, true . . . but I’ll sink or swim under my burdens, as ever.” He bends a bruised, battered, probably ghoulish smile Reid’s way and confesses: “I’ll admit I’m not looking forward to the bit involving pistols and truncheons, though.”

“I would offer back-up for when you make your next move, but I know that would legitimize whatever gossip and machinations are set against you. Make the wagging of tongues rather less . . . idle. But, please keep in mind, McCullum: even the ineptest sabotage has ruined many in its turn. It could do the same to you.” Reid’s voice, though still resonant and carrying—almost unreal in its richness—seems subdued and meek. It seems shaken, even though it does not shake. Then he cuts off another sigh, his eyes bright with frustration and more restraint. “I apologize if I’ve worried or discomfited you. That was not my intent.”

“Nothing said by you or any other leech has the power to worry or discomfit me, Reid. Not at this late date.” Though that’s surely a lie, and a rather glaring one, Reid has the grace to not call him on it. But his eyes narrow slightly, and he doesn’t look up or answer right away. Instead, he turns to his desk and braces himself on his splayed hands. Leaving his back and neck vulnerable to McCullum. Said desk has several obviously incapacitating instruments on it.

McCullum moves back toward Reid’s desk. But when he reaches out it is not for any of those implements. Rather, his hand lands nervously on Reid’s sharp right shoulder-blade.

He had thought Reid couldn’t be more still than death had made him, but the doctor almost literally freezes under McCullum’s light, hesitant touch.

“Tell me about the first one you killed,” McCullum says, his own voice shaking even though his hand is steady. Then, heavy as nothing happens to it on its perch, other than slight loss of warmth. The flesh under his hand is still and chill, but the bone under _that_ is dense and sturdy. Good and strong. “Tell me about your sister.”

Those broad shoulders slump for more than a few moments and don’t fully square back up even after Reid starts speaking, slow and even. “Mary was . . . foremost, my sister was kind and brave. And _good_. To and for everyone she met. Even to those who did not deserve it. She was—” here, he clearly seeks to find the right words to describe the person he had loved perhaps most of all “—kind and brave. Funny and sweet and concerned and sparkling and . . . better than the world she walked. Even as the cruelties of that world increased, so did her brightness, in response. And I admired her for that—for making her brightness, her _heart_ her armor. And for so many other things. I regret that I never told her that, and that in the end I couldn’t . . . that I _didn’t_ protect her, the way she had protected _me_ throughout our lives. Mary was the first and only human being I have ever Embraced and turned, though I did not realize I had until . . . later. And _because_ she was the first, she will also be the _last_.”

Reid hangs his head for a moment, then straightens, glancing over his shoulder at McCullum. Those eyes are intent and laid-bare. “As long as I retain my right mind and heart, and my memory of her—of how to be a good person—Mary Reid lives. If I and my actions henceforth are to be her only legacy in this world . . . I would have her legacy be a full, untarnished, and long-lasting one.”

“You’ve never . . . never killed another human being since.” McCullum exhales as _many_ clues and oddities fall into place—as Dr. Jonathan Emmet Reid begins to at last make reliable sense, after a fashion. “Not for food or . . . why-ever it is your kind create more of you?”

“I have not, and I will not. Not ever.”

In the silence that settles on them, McCullum lets his hand rest where it has landed. He waits for that resting place and the whole bloody situation to feel unnatural and wrong, fearful and enraging. Instead, it simply feels like comfort—if cold and inelegant—freely offered and accepted. And reciprocated.

At least, McCullum takes comfort, whether intended or not, from the way Reid’s shoulders finally square. The way the doctor looks away and moves away. Only just enough that McCullum’s hand slides off his shoulder. But that nonetheless leaves McCullum shivering and regretful for so many things beyond either of their control or best intentions.

“Your dedication and fidelity honor her memory . . . and do you much credit,” he finds himself saying; stilted, but not at all surprised that he truly means it.

Reid takes an unnecessary but deep and shaking breath in. He does not let it out for a long time. When exhale he finally does, it is only to say McCullum’s first name very softly . . . raw and slightly choked. Then, followed by a tone much more like his usual one as he adds a simple: “Thank you.”

McCullum doesn’t know if he’s grateful for Reid’s customary earnest and honest resolve, leavened only sparingly by his awkward-genteel discretion . . . or driven up the nearest wall by it. He’s certain that he doesn’t want it to matter either way and also certain that it very-well-does.

But he says none of that. One of the most exasperating facts of McCullum’s ill-conceived life is how easily he and Reid can communicate with silences at least as well as they do with words. It’s eerie and infuriating and probably dangerous. _Certainly_ dangerous. Yet, McCullum doesn’t say that, either, since Reid likely already knows it and . . . understands.

And is probably spinning his wheels as anxiously about it as McCullum is, if not more so.

“If I’m to be making a temporary safehouse of the Pembroke, I suppose I must report to your Nurse Branagan for my bed-assignment and ration-allotment?”

Reid turns to face him again, smiling a tiny bit. “Ah. Perhaps, after the night you’ve had, it would be best if I acted as your proxy in that matter. Nurse Branagan is a kind soul, but . . . she will perhaps be kinder to _you_ if she doesn’t have you . . . rubbed in her face, so to speak.”

McCullum shakes his head. No doubt, Nurse Branagan has been as misguided in her opinion of Pembroke Hospital’s former administrator, Dr. Edgar Swansea, as Reid, himself, had been. But disabusing her and the rest of the staff at the Hospital of their assumptions isn’t McCullum’s job any longer, now that the threat Swansea had posed has been neutralized. They can canonize the wretch, for all _McCullum_ cares.

Though, he finds himself unsurprised Reid _is bothered_ by it on many fronts, not least of which seems to be that he genuinely does not like the idea of his staff thinking poorly of McCullum, even beyond the standard of their professional care.

Really, Reid is the _oddest_ anomaly of a leech McCullum has ever come across. Though he’s beginning to understand that Reid’s oddness has little to do with having been turned. Reid simply is who and as he is, and death—even his own—had not changed that.

McCullum can relate to that—even grudgingly admires it at least as much as he is bemused by it.

“Watching you contort yourself to be discreet is at once entertaining and exhausting, Dr. Reid. It’s no wonder you aren’t a _proper_ leech—you haven’t the energy left to be, after being so _posh-and-pretty-please_ all night long. You’ve got the whole of London fooled but not me,” he notes, almost smiling himself. Reid’s own small smile widens briefly and his brows lift.

“Yes. You’ve seen through my intricate deception, at last. I was beginning to despair of you, altogether.”

At this, McCullum huffs a startled laugh. When the moment of levity passes, he’s left slumping and yawning. Not-so-suddenly exhausted and leaden-loose. He feels he could sleep for a century, provided that it’s somewhere he won’t likely be murdered while he dozes.

Reid’s bloodless lips twitch, and his icy-pale eyes seem to warm and flicker. “I should speak with Nurse Branagan immediately.” But he simply stands there, staring at McCullum without blinking or moving. McCullum clears his throat and turns beet-red for no reason that bears mentioning or examining.

And there they remain for an eternity or a minute, caught in their shared trap of uneasy truce and unwilling fascination, and stealing wary, helpless glances at each other. Until McCullum sighs and laughs when he has another epiphany.

Before tonight, he and Reid had known how to part ways appropriately, whether with simple farewells or felonious assault. Now . . . this _particular night_ . . . the former will do just as well as it has been. He doesn’t know what, if anything, has changed between himself and Reid to warrant this new and anxious treading on eggshells. But if there are to be _different_ sorts of farewells at later dates—less throw-away farewells that _linger_ —they’ll swim that moat when they come to it and battle whatever beasties lurk therein.

(At the very least, Reid is _damned_ invaluable in a desperate donnybrook, as has been repeatedly and recently proven.)

“Until you return, Reid.” McCullum’s smirk is sardonic and probably snarling under the bruises and swelling.

Reid’s return expression is absent and pleased. His lips are less pale, almost flushed, and bitten. There’s a flash of deep, dark red in Reid’s eyes and a much fainter red in his cheeks.

He still smells strongly of blood and antiseptic . . . foe and friend.

“As you say, McCullum. Until then.”

**NIGHT 0**

On his knees in the Pembroke’s unused surgery theatre—at the mercy of the blurry, vision-trebled beast he’d sought to bring low—Geoffrey McCullum pants and gasps for breath as he glares up at said beast.

Said beast stands tall and implacable over him, no weapons—not even his truest, most reliable ones, his claws and his fangs—in sight. His pale eyes seem translucent set in their pink-red sclera.

“We are the guardians of justice! Priwen shall prevail!” McCullum gasps, more desperate and pleading than he is angry. It’s far easier, he’s finding, to keep a sustaining and invigorating rage going when staring into eyes the color of blood and perdition. Staring into the stern, melancholy but resolute eyes of _Dr. Jonathan Reid_ inspires different feelings altogether.

Those human eyes, though not as obscenely vital as the vampire eyes, still crackle and radiate will and a certainty McCullum would envy, were he a different sort of man.

The beast gazes down at McCullum along his prominent nose. He looks too naked and too human without his ridiculous mouthful of fangs bared. “You cannot accept the fact that we're not enemies, can you? Such a feat is not within you, is it?”

If anything, rather than angry, the beast sounds . . . genuinely sad. Frustrated and incredulous, too, but mostly sad. Scalding shame burns through McCullum for no reasons he can identify. He hangs his head for a moment, still unable to catch his breath—still unable to see in less than triple.

“We have always been enemies and we always will be,” he pants, sneering and shaking. His heart beats hard and fast within him, as always. He’d used to think of the beat as being rallying drums—war-drums. The call to arms in a fight against evil. Now, he suspects the beat to be far less about rallying and putting up the good fight, and more about an admission he’s never allowed himself to hear. “Of all the evils that threaten mankind, Reid, your kind are the _worst_!”

Some of the sternness fades from those icy eyes but the melancholy in them only doubles, as does McCullum’s baffling and intense sense of shame. “I'm not saying we could be friends, you and I. But perhaps we could collaborate to put an end to this epidemic?”

“Never! _We are Priwen! We do not negotiate! We do not compromise!_ ” 

“There is no way you'll ever let me be, McCullum?” The beast paces a little, that rich, resonant voice creaking a bit with anger, before digging into its own lower, marrow-churning registers. Then the beast pauses to face McCullum again, his eyes bright and almost glowing in the dim air of the tightly shuttered and boarded theatre air. “You'll always hunt me down, won't you?”

McCullum scoffs and laughs at the same time, and nearly chokes, but the possibility that _the_ Dr. Jonathan Reid is only just now recognizing the truest fact of both their lives is a knee-slapper. Britain’s Brightest, indeed! Still, McCullum can’t seem to catch his breath and his heart feels as if it’s trying to escape his chest. His vision’s gone so dodgy he can’t tell if there’s three of the beast or ten—though even one is clearly far too many. Even just one is . . . too-bloody-much. And McCullum is so tired. He has been for most of his slaughter-ridden life.

“There’s no escape, leech. Not for either of us,” he says, and can’t for the life of him understand why he should sound so apologetic. So regretful, futile, and grief-muffled. So . . . given in. McCullum does not know _how long_ he’s sounded so blasted given-in, but he knows that he can’t bear another moment of Reid’s— _the beast’s_ sad, _knowing . . . human_ eyes. “Kill me now, if you won’t leave me be. For there is no way you can sway me to your ideals.”

More crackle and flicker and intensity in those chill, fierce eyes . . . and more understanding and warmth, too.

But no more sadness.

“That's where you're mistaken,” the beast says gently, kneeling as McCullum hangs his head again. He’s still not caught his breath, but some of the awful hammering of his heart has lessened and allowed his lungs to do their labor without as much struggle. As proven by the great gasp that escapes him when the beast’s long, cold hand cups his jaw as gently as if handling a newborn.

The sound that sighs out of McCullum’s throat at that careful bordering on _tender_ touch would be mortifying if _anyone_ but Reid . . . but this particular _beast_ had been here to witness it. “Wh-What do you mean?” he asks as Reid tilts his face up. Those eyes are merest inches away, too bright and too clear and too compelling—even more so than the voice.

“I'll spare you, McCullum,” Reid says, his tone thick and stilted, as if he’s holding back some large, telling emotion. Those eyes lose their warmth and sadness and gain cold, towering distance. “I'll offer you the mercy you never offered me.”

Between the eyes and the voice, and his inability to draw a calming, restorative breath, McCullum is slow to respond, and the response itself is inane and pointless: “What is this ruse?”

Another bright flicker in those eyes is all that presages the beast releasing him—shoving him negligently away, as if to avoid being tainted. Those spare lips are curled only slightly in their sneer, but in this case, less is certainly more.

“This is no ruse, McCullum.” Reid backs away from McCullum a few steps, the sneer turning into a tired smirk that doesn’t touch those keen, unreadable eyes. He slowly offers McCullum his hand, his eyebrows lifting wryly when McCullum merely stares at it in confusion. Finally, Reid wags his hand once, with the tiniest intimation of impatience. “This is me letting you go.”

Even as the realization hits that this posh bit of sportsmanlike magnanimity is no trick—is simply . . . _Reid_ being _Reid_ —he reaches out and finds his arm clasped firmly. Finds himself pulled to his feet and pulled closer by the merest fraction of that vampire-strength.

He and Reid are almost of a height: McCullum is exactly six feet and two inches tall. Reid is perhaps one inch taller.

When McCullum is relatively steady and has been staring directly into Reid’s eyes for far too long, from far too _close_ , Reid lets go of his hand—reluctantly, or so it seems to McCullum. Though, he can’t imagine _why_ that reluctance.

“As a professional courtesy. You and I are _both_ trying to save this poor country, after all,” Reid says dryly, then adds with trenchant gallows’ humor: “And in our own ways. Until that end, I _strongly_ suggest you stop putting yourself in mine.”

Then, Reid’s turned away, and with the loss of that gaze and that voice, McCullum sags and nearly falls to his achy knees. His vision _quadruples_ and begins to tunnel as Reid strides confidently toward the lift, seeming to be limned in bright sunlight . . . though that cannot be.

“I'll kill you, Reid! Next time we meet, _I will end you!_ ” McCullum calls as he sways and fights to not swoon. Despite having lost no blood and having suffered no greatly incapacitating injuries, he’s barely holding himself together and upright. He feels so weak and aching. So _empty_ and adrift.

“See?” Reid tosses over his shoulder as he raises the slatted gate through which shines unlikely— _impossible_ —sunlight. He steps into it, into the lift, and turns to face McCullum. He’s probably smiling, though, the sunlight’s so bright, McCullum can’t even make out those striking, austere features. “Progress already! You called me by my name. Until the next time: good evening, hunter.”

The gate is shut and the light slowly fades. The lift begins its tired, mechanical work with near-silent groans.

Reid has . . . _the beast_ has vanished, as beasts tend to do when they’re able.

McCullum’s hammering heart slows and the world around him dims further. As he swoons, he can still see those eyes and hear _that voice_ —feel it wrap around him like warm, rough velvet. Feel it throb within every bit of him, like god-drums. Like the steady rush of a powerful river. Like the scent of blood and antiseptic. Like being _alive_ for the first time in over a decade. Like—

* * *

If we're still alive

My regrets are few.

If my life is mine

What shouldn't I do?

I get wherever I'm going.

I get whatever I need.

While my blood's still flowing

And my heart still beats.

Beating like a hammer.

Beating like a hammer—

Help… I'm alive,

My heart keeps beating like a hammer….

END

**Author's Note:**

>  **PROMPTS :**  
>   
> "RP Memes and Prompts." Rockinromemes, Tumblr.com. A collection of RP memes, AU lists, Drabble and Thread prompts This is a sideblog complied of various memes I love and hoard from my MAIN rp blog(s). ENJOY! Remember: THIS IS NOT AN RP BLOG! Accessed December 12, 2020. https://rockinrpmemes.tumblr.com/post/155471475916/enemies-to-lovers-meme  
>   
>   
>   
>  **Thanks :**  
>   
> To anyone giving this a read (and hopefully a comment and/or kudo :-).  
>   
>   
>   
>  **Resources & References for this fic:**  
>   
> 
> 
>   * VAMPYR: Complete Walkthrough: [44 videos] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgPhYhf1rAvFAuEMhsk4k2UjZWXphDsgj 
>   
> 
>   * Vampyr's Story Explained!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANfxsWz_mZY&t 
>   
> 
>   * Vampyr - All Jonathan & McCullum Scenes ( Spare or Turn ): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuPZcsjZ6-Q 
>   
> 
>   * Vampyr.wiki.fextralife.com
>   * Vampyr.gamepedia.com
>   * VAMPYR Wiki at FANDOM 
>   * Genius.com 
>   * Google 
>   * Wikipedia 
>   * YouTube 
> 

> 
>   
>    
>    
>  **Powered by :**   
>    
> 
> 
>   * “Hats Off to the Bull.” Chevelle, _Hats Off to the Bull_. [4:05] https://youtu.be/4MRLd1Cgbdg 
>   
> 
>   * "black hole sun | soundgarden | acoustic cover ft. jennah bell | stories." Stories, _Vol. 1_. [4:09] https://youtu.be/YXT3ZDbKaik 
>   
> 
>   * "Help I'm Alive - Acoustic." Metric, _Fantasy_. [5:13] https://youtu.be/-1pCOR9Rv9M 
>   
> 
>   * [The End is the Beginning Is. . . .](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDZSuw00OZ3Y1_7bzYhvh6D6i_HbTfVcd). [playlist, 83 songs] 
>   
>  

> 
>   
>   
>   
> [TUMBLES with the bug](http://beetle-stans.tumblr.com)! And [PILLOWFORTS with the bug, too](https://www.pillowfort.io/beetle-comma-the)!


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